Both Gilchrist and Williamson had shrunk back in alarm from that brandished revolver—were unable, in their astonishment, to utter a word. They could only stare, bewildered.
The old gentleman looked down at the dog which still offered him the paper.
“I understand—perfectly,” he said, with a grim appreciation of some subtlety which eluded them. “In a better cause, I should admire the ingenuity with which you have utilized means which are apparently of the simplest. I do homage to your powers, gentlemen. Or perhaps you yourselves are only half-conscious tools of that occult force you think you control—that occult force which has, with such singular completeness, worked my ruin.” There was a sneer in his voice. He turned to Gilchrist. “As for you, sir, I congratulate you on your faculty of dissimulation. You gulled me excellently well. I can only bow in acknowledgment of the supreme irony with which you beguiled me into telling you the miserable story which, of course, you already knew far better than I. I do not grudge you your triumph. It was superbly well planned. You held me without suspicion whilst you awaited the arrival—for the last time—of the symbol of my doom—the white dog!” His smile was an illumination of savage sarcasm.
There was a pause of silence in which Williamson glanced inquiringly at his friend.
The old gentleman laughed in a mirthless mockery which was hideous to hear.
“But now, face to face at last with you whose monstrous plot I was at least able to detect, if I could not baffle it—I yet cheat you!” he cried. “I cheat you of your complete vengeance! You thought to condemn me to the ignominy of a murderer’s trial!” He laughed again. “I elude you—thus!”
With a quick movement he raised the revolver and fired.
The two friends, after the moment in which they recovered from the shock, bent over his body.
“I don’t understand!” said Williamson, horror-stricken and mystified. “Who and what was he?”